Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday May 13, 2013 @11:30AM
from the all-your-seeds-are-belong-to-us dept.

Pigskin-Referee writes in with news of the Supreme Court's decision in a dispute between Monsanto and an Indiana farmer over patented seeds. "The Supreme Court has sustained Monsanto Co.'s claim that an Indiana farmer violated the company's patents on soybean seeds that are resistant to its weed-killer. The justices, in a unanimous vote Monday, rejected the farmer's argument that cheap soybeans he bought from a grain elevator are not covered by the Monsanto patents, even though most of them also were genetically modified to resist the company's Roundup herbicide. Justice Elena Kagan says a farmer who buys patented seeds must have the patent holder's permission. More than 90 percent of American soybean farms use Monsanto's 'Roundup Ready' seeds, which first came on the market in 1996."

The simple matter is that the farmer's recourse is to now sue the seller (operator of the grain elevator), for selling seeds he is not authorized to sell, resulting in damages xzy as stipulated in the costs of the lawsuits the farmer had to defend itself against.

I was wondering why Monsanto didnt sue the elevator instead. Obviously sueing your distributor and claiming they have no right to sell is a short sighted activity, but they are the ones who violated the contract. I just cant wrap my head around the concept that you can purchase something not under contract, that someone else can then come along and sue you for having purchased under incorrect terms.

I guess the car analogy is that if you buy a stolen car, you are in possession of a stolen vehicle , but the real wrong doer is the guy selling 50 stolen cars on his used car lot.

I guess the car analogy is that if you buy a stolen car, you are in possession of a stolen vehicle , but the real wrong doer is the guy selling 50 stolen cars on his used car lot.

But in that case you do have to forfeit the stolen vehicle, so you are out the money that you paid for it. I guess the thinking is that he has to pay back any profits he made? I don't agree with the decision or the lawsuit, but the car analogy is not that different.

The car analogy is: you buy a used (not stolen) Toyota, pull it apart to make molds of the bodywork and parts etc, and then start manufacturing and selling Toyotas.

No, the car analogy is that the Toyota you bought starts making copies of itself. Unsure what else to do, you eat them (?). Then, Toyota (the company, not the car) comes to your house and rapes you for violating their patents on eating cars.

To continue the analogy Toyota only sued you after you started farming Toyotas: you put your toyota in a field full of scrap metal and plastic feedstocks, fed it lots of energy, culled all of the Hyundais that appeared amongst the Toyotas, and then sold some of your new Toyotas and kept the rest to make even more.

If you had just driven it around and hadn't hit the "copy myself" button: no infringement.

No, the car analogy is that the Toyota you bought drives past a Honda and gets some of the exhaust residue on it. Then the guys from Honda come around, swab your car, say that it tests positive for being a Honda, and rape you over the table.

The seeds he bought weren't Monsanto seeds, they had just been pollinated (contaminated) by Monsanto plants that were upwind. The Monsanto genetic pollen is now all over his field, and any new soy beans he plants will have the Monsanto genetic fingerprint, meaning he will never be able to buy another brand ever again.

I think an enterprising lawyer should partner up with a genetic testing company and go around to the small farmers to test their seeds before they plant to certify them as Monsanto GM free. Then periodically test the plants throughout the season, and as soon as any sign of Monsanto contamination shows up, sue Monsanto and every farmer within 30 miles that uses Monsanto seed for environmental contamination and plant rape.Huge class action damages here.

They didn't sue the elevator because they did nothing wrong. They were selling the soybeans for 'feed, milling, and other uses'. Not for seed to be planted. You really can't do anything else useful with soybeans, so there you go.

They were selling the soybeans for 'feed, milling, and other uses'. Not for seed to be planted.

Well clearly Monsanto need to add DRM to their seeds because we can't have people buying seeds and then using them in an unlicensed fashion. I suppose the method that would work best in this case is to install a root kit.

The grain elevator didn't do anything wrong. This wasn't decided based on the licensing agreement, which in any case the grain elevator never signed. The farmer lost because he made and marketed replicas of patented items.

I just cant wrap my head around the concept that you can purchase something not under contract, that someone else can then come along and sue you for having purchased under incorrect terms.

The issue is not in the terms of purchase but in the lack of license to create new instances of the patented item. When Monsanto, or affiliate, sells seeds to a farmer they license the farmer to produce new instances of the patented item from those seeds in one growing season. After that season they have no license to create new instances of the patented item. If the farmer saves some of the crop and plants them in subsequent seasons any crops generated from those seeds are now unlicensed copies of a patented item.

The crux of the situation is that one can sell properly licensed copies of patented items, as the elevator operator did, but can not create new copies of a patented item without a license, as the farmer did.

I was thinking that the elevator would have a reselling license that forced them to force the contract terms downstream. It seems that selling these as feedstock allowed them to not impose the license/contract restrictions, and therefore allowed them to sell the beans below the market rate. The farmer then gets the seeds under no contract, but is expected to not plant them.

He went to a grain elevator that held soybeans it typically sells for feed, milling and other uses, but not as seed.

Nothing indicates that they sold him the soybeans to be planted. They sold them for feed, milling, or other uses, but he decided to plant them instead.

Which to me just highlights how bad it is to allow something self-replicating (like plant seeds) to be patented. You can buy the seeds and grow the plants, but the 'fruit' you get from the plants (which are just new seeds) you're not allowed to plant. Frankly, it's stupid IMO, and one more reason patent law needs a major overhaul.

I think the key word here is "sold." In the old-fashioned days, when you bought a physical object, it would become yours to do with as you will: to eat, plant, or whatever else you may want to do (including silly things like using them as alternative flooring in your house).

In other words, by the strict definition of the verb "to sell," the seller loses control over what the buyer does with the item once the item has changed hands. IANAL but what worries me about this case is that the idea of selling something for limited set of purposes seems to be implicitly accepted. Why? How can the elevator sell seeds "for" one purpose but not another, and why is the court willing to respect those conditions? It seems like a huge backward step for property rights and a worrisome precedent from that perspective.

In this particular case, the net gain to the society is mostly around the hips, upper thighs and lower bellies. USA is one of the few countries in the world where obesity is correlated wit poverty, not wealth. The super cheap corn, and HFCS contribute to that a lot. And corn became super cheap because it was engineered to be roundup ready.

Wait till that gene transfers to the weeds. Then there will be famine and all the gain the society would make it catastrophic.

That may have helped ice the unanimous SCOTUS decision, but that's not what the lawsuit was really about. The lawsuit was about planting unauthorized Monsanto seeds, pure and simple. Monsanto is constantly suing farmers who never buy or plant any kind of Monsanto seeds merely because some Monsanto seeds show up in their fields from cross-pollination. In some of these cases Monsanto is even suspected of causing the cross-pollination so they can bring a lawsuit.

There was a big fight going on between organic farmers and Monsanto....

Was, because the case was thrown out a year ago because the organic farmers simply couldn't cite an example of what they claimed happens. They created a false controversy, couldn't cite an example, judge threw out the case. Try to keep up with the latest news if you're going to attempt to use it in your arguments.:P

The simple matter is that the farmer's recourse is to now sue the seller (operator of the grain elevator), for selling seeds he is not authorized to sell

Wrong. Because the farmer wasn't sued for planting and growing the seeds. That was NOT the issue in this case, although you would be led to believe it was by the crappy Slashdot summary. The issue was that Bowman (the defendant):1) Bought seeds that were mostly Roundup Ready2) Planted them3) Sprayed the crop with glyphosate (the herbicide in Roundup) to kill the non-GMO plants4) Saved the resulting 100% pure RR beans, and planted them the following yearThis was a case of blatant, intentional infringement. Bowman deliberately concentrated the RR gene, and benefited from it by spraying with glyphosate (which would kill non-RR bean plants). Bowman openly admitted that this was what he did. His defense was not "I didn't do it", but rather "I have a right to do it". Well the Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. If he had simply bought the bean seeds, and grown them without herbicides, there would have been no issue.

It may be dumb. we may all disagree with it. But the court made the right decision for the case at hand. the job of SCOTUS is to interpret the laws as written, not write laws themselves or fix them to how they should be. in this case SCOTUS made a limited finding in favor of monsanto. now whether we agree with the farmer that he should have been able to do it or not, is a seperate issue. as the law stands, what he did was against it (the law) and he knew it.

unfortuantely right now patent aw is largely a one size fits all arena. and if we want to fix that, then we need to fix the laws behind it.

Our holding today is limited—addressing the situation before us, rather than every one involving a self-replicating product. We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose. We need not address here whether or how the doctrine of patent exhaustion would apply in such circumstances. In the case at hand, Bowman planted
Monsanto’s patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article. Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct.

If he didn't use the pesticide he probably would have been fine. Since various sources said about 90% of the beans would be GMO-infected he could simply have planted the seeds directly and would have had a much stronger defense.

And of course, the court left the more thorny issues open for a future lawsuit.

Kagan emphasizes the purpose: "to make and market replicas of them", but does not mention whether taking extra steps to ensure fidelity of the final product was necessary for infringement. Would a final product that was still 81% pesticide resistant (punnett cross for 90% of the starting seeds being RR, I really don't have a clue what to expect though) be a good enough replica to be infringing?

It likely won't work, as the elevator was selling the other seed as feed, not for planting. The farmer was banking on getting RR seed, because he knew the elevator didn't care what kind of seed went into the stuff for "feed/milling/etc".

He was trying to argue that first sale doctrine means the patent can't tell him he can't use the cheap seed for planting. Which is true. But the patent still applies because he can use the seed to grow more seed, and he knew it.

He was trying to use patent law to void a contract. The ruling clearly states he would not found himself in trouble if he was using the seeds for his own use, but instead he bought seeds counting on the fact that some would have the anti-Round up gene.

As much as the idea of patented seeds is ridiculous and dangerous (IMO), this particular argument wasn't going to fly.

The more important part of the decision (FTA): "But Kagan said the court's holding only "addresses the situation before us."" There was no wider ruling on whether seeds are patentable as IP or anything sweeping like that.

I agree that it was a bad test case (good for Monsanto though).The complication is that he bought grain elevator seeds once and then saved/replanted them for 8 years.That seems like much less of a grey area than if he had kept buying them from the grain elevator every year.

As much as the idea of patented seeds is ridiculous and dangerous (IMO), this particular argument wasn't going to fly.

The more important part of the decision (FTA): "But Kagan said the court's holding only "addresses the situation before us."" There was no wider ruling on whether seeds are patentable as IP or anything sweeping like that.

Though true, it's also a pretty good implication that seeds are patentable as IP, because patent ineligibility would be something the Supreme Court could raise sua sponte (deciding an issue on their own initiative, as opposed to merely deciding issues addressed by the lower court).

The organic farmer selling non-GMO crops who sues for damages 'cause his plants are cross-pollenated by a neighboring farmer using GMO seeds who doesn't follow the guidelines for planting a barrier row of non-GMO plants around the edges of his field.

I agree with the other posters that THIS case certainly seems like the defendant was trying to avoid paying for a copyrighted good. However, what I don't understand is that a seed differs from most other copyrighted works in a very special way: it is self replicating. It would be as if I made a useful piece of software that sends out copies of itself to random people (aside from its useful part). Then when I found someone who was using one of the copies it sent out I would sue them. This sounds like how the RIAA would upload songs to torrent sites then sue the people who downloaded them. How is this reasonable? Sure Monsanto has a patent on the genes (something I also disagree with) in the seed but it is putting those genes into a product which spews itself out into the world. Shouldn't a patent/copyright holder hold some responsibility for not disseminating their own product?

I am not clear on this farmer’s specific case, but Monsanto has lost all rights to protect its patent on any seeds that it allowed to be planted in a non-environmentally control environment, AKA outdoors. Our legal system cannot supersede the basics facts of nature.

If you allow your patented seeds to be planted out doors and allow their pollen to escape freely into the wind, you have no right to tell anyone that they have no right to use seeds produced from their own non-Monsanto plants that happened to have been inadvertently pollenated by Monsanto’s insufficient processes and out right failure to adequately protect its own patent. At best the only recourse that Monsanto has is to fully compensate the lost seed and potential crop of any person that has seeds of this kind in exchange for destroying them.

Monsanto cannot legally protect a patent for seed that they have knowing allowed and opening allowed to enter the world’s ecosystem. There are forces there that no court has the juristiction to control. This is not as simple as returning a lost bag of money found on the side of the road. This is Mother Nature doing what it does. Monsanto is aware of this issue and knows how to protect their patent by only allowing their seeds to be planted inside environmentally controlled green houses. This is a failure on their part to protect their patent.

By the way Monsanto did not create the genes that make this seed resistant. They genes came from another public plant that anyone can own. All they truly should have been allowed to patent was the process of adding the genes to the soybean. They don’t own the genes; and no court has the authority to give the sole right to use the genes to anyone entity. The genes are publicly owed when in the original plant or any other plant that nature choses.

Sorry, but the patent only applies to the seed made/raised by Monsanto.

Once it's been through a single planting / harvesting - it is no long the exact same seed - mutations have set in.

Unless it is 100% genetically identical to the seed sold by Monsanto, whether or not it carries the RR gene sequence is irrelevant - the patent applies to the entire gene sequence, not just the bit that makes it RR.

So once a single dna chain is modified (ie through natural selection) - it is no longer the patented product.

Monsanto claiming that they own the patent on the seed after it's gone through a generation of mutations, is akin to a prosecutor stating that xyz female is guilty of a crime committed by abc male because their DNA is 90+% matching.

With that low level of dna matching, a bonobo could be brought to trial because their DNA is over 90% identical to that of a human.

Whilst it is apparent that this farmer was deliberately circumventing the patent in this case, if one were to wish to produce a roundup-ready crop "naturally", this would be exactly the way it would be done. Unfortunately, because of Monsanto, it would be a lot harder to do than without as now you have to compensate for the possibility of contamination.

Monsanto's monoculture crop is a global disaster waiting to happen. The first disease that comes along which has evolved to target Monsanto's GM plants will wipe out a HUGE portion of the world's food supply.

But what if some human disease was engineered and passed around the globe in an epidemic which rendered people allergic to Monsanto's GM crops? Now we've got a world of useless and even dangerous plants which are essentially out of control.

And to top it all off? You might be able to sue all the sick people who contract the disease!:) Did you forget to patent the genetic material of your new disease?

Monsanto has a policy to protect its investment in seed development that prohibits farmers from saving or reusing the seeds once the crop is grown. Farmers must buy new seeds every year.

Only farmers that sign a contract with Monsanto are bound by this agreement. If you want to save your own seeds, you are free to do so. The defendant in this case was NOT sued for just planting seeds that happened to be GMO. He was sued for deliberately spraying his crop with glyphosate herbicide to kill non-RR plants in order to isolate the RR gene, and then he saved the resulting 100% RR beans and planted them the following year. Portraying him as an innocent and unwitting victim is absurd. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Yes, he was deliberatly trying to get around the patent. But he was doing so with techniques that have been unequivocally legal for millenia. A decade ago, no one would have questioned that it was legal to replant seeds from last year. A decade ago, no one would have questioned that it was legal to select for herbicide resistance by spraying plants and keeping the ones that lived. Now those things are illegal.

The US government and Monsanto have clearly overstepped the limits of legitmate power. This is why we have the 9th and 10th amendments. Portraying Monsanto as an innocent and unwilling victim is absurd. They know exactly what they are doing, destroying traditional agriculture for their own profit.

Which is why farmers use seeds with GM traits. These traits reduce many of the input costs (fertilizer, fuel, time, pesticides, etc.) associated with growing soy and corn.

Farmers are professionals, and they are more than capable of making decisions about which technologies to adopt for themselves. These are not victims FORCED to buy something against their will, but reasonable people who weigh the costs and benefits of each technology and make their own determinations of the value. My group sells to many of these farmers (on the animal production side), and they are not passive sheep buying whatever our salesmen tell them is best. They do their homework, run the numbers, bargan hard and play one vendor against another just like any other procurement officer, because it is their own money on the line.

Fact is, farmers have been buying new seeds every year for far longer than GM seeds have been commercially available. I could be mistaken, but i belive that contracts prohibiting keeping seeds also pre-date GM seeds. Seed companies have made their money for decades by developing deep crop improvement research and development pipelines. Because they hire lots of PhD carrying crop geneticists, they can generate more improvement from year to year than a farmer can do on his own, with his already limited time. This enables farmers to outsource their crop improvement to specialists who are more efficient, allowing them to devote more effort on what they are best at, Growing the food. GM is just a new tool to help the seed companies, and the farmers that buy their seeds achieve the goals they have been pursuing for years.

Without that policy Monsanto would have a year to recoup their investment in research and development as subsequent crops would be planted with saved seeds. That would remove any incentive to create the resistant seeds as the investment would never be recouped.

That's a very harsh policy and they probably charge a premium for their seed, it must be tough to be a farmer nowadays.

A premium is quite justified in that there was a lot of expensive research and development that went into creating the seeds. Farmers do not have to use Monsanto seeds; there are others on the market but they are not as high yield.

The part of patent law that allows this to occur is the licensing of the ability to create new copies of the patented item. When Monsanto, or affiliate, sells seeds to a farmer they license the farmer to create one crop from the seeds. If the farmers saves the seeds and plants them he is now creating more copies than he has been licensed to do and has therefore broken the patent. The court held that since the farmer created new copies of the patented item without license he violated the patent and is liable for damages.

The backstory: Roundup is a weedkiller. It's also a plant killer. So Monsanto developed a soybean with roundup resistance. Lazy (uh, I mean efficient) farmers could just spray roundup everywhere to kill off the weeds.

If you've heard of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, you know what happened next.

So now you have roundup-resistant super weeds and farmers need to manually weed their crops. By the time the patent expires, there will be no advantage ove

The details of RoundupReady gene is a little bit different than this...

Monsanto found a bacteria in their chemical plant wastewater which was eating Glyphosphate. They examined this bacteria and isolated the gene it was using to break down the herbicide. They introduced this gene into plants, which now also break down the herbicide.

In my research involving a human pathogen, the development of drug resistance to some drugs mostly involves duplications, while for other drugs it mostly involves point mutations to relevant enzymes.

Do you have a citation for what is the most common mechanism of Glyphosphate resistance in weed plants? This is not a topic where I follow the literature extensively, so I am really curious.

Well, obviously it helps Monsanto as a company, and all of their employees involved in GMO product development, marketing, sales, and the relevant office staff who work in a supporting role. Those people far outnumber the numbers employeed by this particular farmer.

A local farmer is just trying to feed mouths and make ends meet yet the Big Pharma et al get to shit all over the little man once again

Or, you could look at it as one person trying to take food from the mouths of everyone working at Monsanto (who is not a pharmacutical company BTW). If this farmer had been allowed to do this legally, then Monsanto (and other seed companies that use GM technology, which is most of them) would have to take a serious look at whether they could afford to develop new GM traits. GM seed development and approval costs millions of dollars and takes about a decade. If it became legal to buy GM seeds intended for milling and then plant them, then the price for new seeds would no longer be able to support future developments. That would cost the jobs of thousands of crop geneticists, supporting staff, sales staff, etc. Even if you don't like GM on principle (which is stupid, myopic, and decidedly anti-science), those are a lot of people who depend on the current system.

What little faith I have left in humanity is quickly diminishing due to these wankers

It is people such as yourself who are far more dangerous to MY faith in humanity. You obviously have no direct connection to agriculture, and that's OK. Only about 1.2 to 1.5% of Americans are involved in any form of food production. However, you are a strong, vocal critic of a field about which you know next to nothing. In fact, it is probably safe to assume that you don't even know enough to be aware of how little you know (something mention here on/. not too long ago). I don't tell teachers how to teach, or mechanics how to fix cars. I don't tell lawyers what the law says, or engineers which rocket fuel is best to get us back into space. I'd appreciate it if you would at least talk to the professionals in the field before believeing whatever half-baked hack-job of a documentary or website it was that gave you the misguided impression that you actually understand anything about agriculture or GM crops.

Being 'little' does not magically exempt someone from the rules. One can argue for or against how much sense the current patent system makes, but the size of the defendant's operation should not play into the case.

In this case a farmer who typically buys a product found a way to get it cheaper by buying a version of it that was only marked for consumption not growing, then planted it. Essentially he purchased an expired license and tried to use it like it was new, no different then, say, hacking your ca

If he gets any cross pollination from other farmers using monsanto seeds, he'll get sued again. And he will lose. Farmers always lose these lawsuits where their fields got cross-pollinated by patented genes.

If he gets any cross pollination from other farmers using monsanto seeds, he'll get sued again. And he will lose. Farmers always lose these lawsuits where their fields got cross-pollinated by patented genes.

I frequently hear this claim, and I frequently hear the other side declare that it's bullshit. Neither side actually cites a court case. Does this actually happen, or not?

The courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer's control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser's action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category. The appellate court also discussed a possible intermediate scenario, in which a farmer is aware of contamination of his crop by genetically modified seed, but tolerates its presence and takes no action to increase its abundance in his crop. The court held that whether such a case would constitute patent infringement remains an open question but that it was a question that did not need to be decided in the Schmeiser case.(Paragraph 57 of the Appeals Court Decision[6])

I frequently hear this claim, and I frequently hear the other side declare that it's bullshit. Neither side actually cites a court case. Does this actually happen, or not?

Of course not. How could anyone cite a court case that doesn't exist?

When pressed, the claimers usually cite the case of Percy Schmeiser [wikipedia.org], the farmer portrayed in the film "Food Inc.". But what Schmeiser actually did was take deliberate action over a number of years to isolate and concentrate the RR genes by repeatedly spraying his crops with glyphosate herbicide to kill off any non-GMO plants. We was sued for blatant, intentional infringement. Yet he is still the default poster child for how Monsanto is victimizing poor innocent farmers.

Sure they have. But before the patented "Roundup-Ready" gene, they didn't spray it on their crops. There is a huge difference between using Roundup before planting to prepare a no-till field, and using it mid-season to kill the weeds competing with your crops.

If he gets any cross pollination from other farmers using monsanto seeds, he'll get sued again. And he will lose. Farmers always lose these lawsuits where their fields got cross-pollinated by patented genes.

I frequently hear this claim, and I frequently hear the other side declare that it's bullshit. Neither side actually cites a court case. Does this actually happen, or not?

The hang up comes when a farmer replants cross-pollinated seeds, and then intentionally roundup's the results so he has a crop of new 100% roundup-ready seeds to replant, even though he never bought seeds from monsanto to begin with. Farmers who just let the cross pollination go unchecked and never use roundup anyway are fine, monsanto would have to have probable cause (depending on who you ask) and test a LOT of seed to find the ones that are roundup-ready.

Farmers who just let the cross pollination go unchecked and never use roundup anyway are fine, monsanto would have to have probable cause (depending on who you ask) and test a LOT of seed to find the ones that are roundup-ready.

Actually, could such farmers potentially sue Monsanto for polluting their fields? After all, cross-pollination with Roundup Ready plants is making the field produce GMOs, which might negatively affect their market prospects.

Actually, could such farmers potentially sue Monsanto for polluting their fields?

Yes and no. Yes, because at least one farmer [wikipedia.org] has actually done so, and won $660. No, because that was a default judgement in small claims court, and sets no precedent. If Monsanto had showed up and actually taken the suit seriously, it is unlikely he would have won. The reason is that the cross pollination causes no monetary damage. If a farmer is growing organic soybeans, they are still considered organic even if they contain some incidental pollination from RR fields. If you can't show damages, you have no case.

If he gets any cross pollination from other farmers using monsanto seeds, he'll get sued again. And he will lose. Farmers always lose these lawsuits where their fields got cross-pollinated by patented genes.

Have any farmer groups tried turning the tables, and suing MONSANTO for putting a product out, that infects a farmers non-gmo plants? Shouldn't Monsanto be required to make sure their products self terminate, and can't spread to 'infect' regular crops?

Everyone screamed at Monsanto for developing the terminator trait in seeds, because everyone thought it would be used to stop farmers from saving seed. Monsanto dropped it, partly from bad press, partly because the trait was a bit too sensitive to temperature to be reliable. The thing is, traditional hybrid seeds already tend to lose their carefully selected traits if you save them and plant another generation. If you want to save seed you would want to start with a stable variety in the first place.

The problem here - He did use "regular" seeds: "cheap soybeans he bought from a grain elevator". Monsanto seeds don't come out an easily-identifiable fluorescent purple, he had no way of knowing which seeds came from Monsanto licensees and which came from traditional seeds.

For all of post-nomadic human history, farmers have taken a small portion of last year's harvest and used it to plant this year's crop. Standard Operating Procedure.

Unfortunately for we mere humans, Monsanto couldn't have begged for a better "test" case to go before the USSC. Even I have difficulty feeling bad for Farmer Dale, given that he deliberately tried to reproduce Monsanto's IP commercially without licensing it. But the underlying idea of taking seeds from the community hopper and planting them, perfectly kosher. It completely disgusts me that this case effectively sets a precedent, placing on the farmer the burden of separating the non-fluorescent-purple Monsanto seeds from the non-fluorescent-purple legal-to-grow seeds.

He admitted in court that he sprayed the field with RoundUp, intentionally killing off all the non-RoundUp Ready seeds. This fact weighed heavily in the courts decision. The majority opinion implies that the court might have (probably would have) ruled differently without the action of the farmer. The case does not create any kind of a broad precedent.

They still make Agent Orange, and it's still primarily used as herbicide in modern farming. The original toxic compound was a mistake caused by poor controls in manufacturing of a component of Agent Orange.

No, 2,4,5-T is no longer widely used as a herbicide. 2,4-D is, but that isn't "Agent Orange", which specifically is the 50:50 mix of those two compounds. In fact, 2,4,5-T has been banned for use in the US for several decades now, and the toxic dioxin compounds in it are a side-effect of the manufacturing process. Even a highly rigorous manufacturing system will still produce them, albeit in a low concentration.

Besides, the fact that the large concentrations of dioxin in Agent Orange were a "mistake" does absolutely nothing to increase my confidence in Monsanto's ability to safely produce herbicides.

The first sale doctrine gets you out of licensing terms but it doesn't allow you to make more copies of the patented article:

But Kagan disagreed. "Bowman planted Monsanto's patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article," she said. "Patent exhaustion provides no haven for such conduct."

And rightly so; the genes can spread, devastating natural crops, leaving Monsanto as the controlling entity of all food seed. "But how is Monsanto supposed to make money if it can't control gene spreading by either force of patents or by use of dangerous terminator genes?" That's not society's problem. Monsanto owns PepsiCo et al. They have sufficient assets to make profit without having to turn to comic book super villainy.

Just remember that without those higher crop yields, people will probably die (the poorest first, if history is any indication). Growing 19th-century pre-GM/pre-pesticide crops is going to mean 19th century yields, which barely supported a 19th century population that was a fraction of what it is today.

Modern mechanization isn't going to help either. You would be lucky it that even made up for the much smaller farm labor force.

So if you have no moral objection to telling people in the third-world "Hey sorry

Oh BS. There are plenty of high yield seed varieties that aren't own by Monsanto or anyone else. Besides 'Roundup Ready' is just a gene for Roundup resistance and the weeds have already appropriated said gene for their own purposes, thankyouverymuch. The way to feeding the world's poor is not to rely on herbicide resistance.

This is about selling more Roundup. In case you don't know what that is, it's a herbicide that would burn your throat if you got a whiff of it.

While I have no love lost for Monsanto and their IP enforcement goon squad, the herbicide in question is a pretty benign substance to work with. Check out the glyphosate [wikipedia.org] page on wikipedia for an overview of it's activity and interaction with people. While it's not something you'd want to intentionally ingest, it's not a potent inhalation or other hazard.

In case you don't know what that is, it's a herbicide that would burn your throat if you got a whiff of it.

While another poster has pointed out the wiki page for the herbicide, what you state isn't really true.

I bought glyphosate specifically to target poison ivy on my property. I take chemicals pretty seriously, but after reading the warnings, looking up the risks, and working with it for a bit, it seemed pretty benign in terms of actual harmful chemicals (ie: I've purchased lye for making pretzels and that stuff is pretty dangerous).

Burning your throat if you get a whiff of it is simply not true (as inevitably I did get a whiff of it). Perhaps if it were a high concentration(like what would be encountered in production or shipping), but at the concentrations which you dillute it to in order to use it, there was no burning, no smell, and as far as adverse reactions?

The bits of poison ivy I actually touched caused me more skin damage than the glyphosate.

No, but if the genes transfer, they'll reduce future seed yields for any nearby farmers. By a lot if they're dominant, by a little if they're recessive (although by more for generations if recessive because the trait will only crop up rarely; pun intended).

Your full of shit.

Well, I did just get back from a big lunch. FYI, "you're" is a contraction of "you are".

No, but if the genes transfer, they'll reduce future seed yields for any nearby farmers. By a lot if they're dominant, by a little if they're recessive (although by more for generations if recessive because the trait will only crop up rarely; pun intended).

By at most a little regardless of whether they are dominant or recessive. The vast majority of the seed (99%) will have been fertilized by other plants in the same field. This might cause issues with organic certification, but not with seed germination yield.
http://www.agbioforum.org/v4n2/v4n2a02-jemison.htm [agbioforum.org]

The plants may require nothing but mother nature, but in this case the farmer did a lot of work to propagate them, actively sowing, harvesting, saving them, and resowing them for 8 generations.

What you describe is not illegal, and if he had merely done what you describe he would not have been sued. What you leave out, is that during each of those generations he sprayed his crop with glyphosate (the herbicide in Roundup) to kill any non-GMO plants and isolated and concentrated the patented gene, while simultaneously benefiting from the patent by ridding his fields of weeds in a way that someone using non-RR seeds would not be able to do. The issue here was active, deliberate and sustained infringement. Planting random seeds, and even replanting those seeds if grown without active use of the RR properties, was not an issue in this case. I have never heard of any case where Monsanto has sued anyone for unintentional infringement, despite lots of mythology to the contrary.

What you've just described is normal selective breeding, as practiced in agriculture for thousands of years. If he had discovered that some of his crop had a naturally-occurring resistance to glyphosate (I'm so pissed I won't even say the brand name!) and selectively bred his crop to express that gene, that would be no problem. And that's exactly what he actually did do, except that his seed stock was contaminated with genetically-modified trash seeds. How the fuck is that his fault?

In other words:

First, if the patent covers a soybean plant that's been made glyphosate resistant by any means, then that's a bad, overly-broad patent. It is unreasonable to restrict anyone from independently breeding a plant that "just so happens" to exhibit similar traits! It is only reasonable to patent the particular GMO technique, not the gene sequence itself.

Second, if the breeding wasn't independent, that was the fault of whoever sold the seeds to the farmer (i.e., the people who bought the previous generation of seeds directly from The Company That Shall Not Be Named in the first place). They're the ones who broke their contract, not the farmer who was actually sued!

If this is what constitutes infringement, then fuck the law that makes it so with a rusty rake.

Have you considered switching to decaf? Anyway, the "Roundup-Ready" patent expires next year, so calm down.

All Monsanto and its ilk is doing is raking in profits by holding people by the throats

They can only hold you by the throat if you put your throat in their hands. You are perfectly free to grow non-GMO soybeans if you don't like their terms. The non-GMO beans are not as productive, but they sell for a premium, so plenty of farmers grow them profitably.

You've not heard of "drift" have you (which I appreciate is not what happened here), where the non-GMO crops are cross pollinated by GMO crops. Then Monsanto (among others) sue the hapless farmer, take his farm and throw him off his own land. All because that's the way nature works.

Music doesn't make copies of itself if let alone. Life does. Plant a few of these in a field (maybe near natural soybeans), leave them alone for a few years, and you might have a lot more of them. Actively cultivate them and you can multiply them exponentially. If Monsanto wanted to be the sole seller of these beans, they should never sell them until gathered and sterilized via gamma radiation. Selling them as seed is inviting someone to do exactly what this farmer did.

Actually, digital music and software do create copies of themselves when used. That copy is specifically exempted in copyright law because it is a necessary part of the use of the product.

Absolutely true. I once downloaded some Techno MP3s onto a hard drive with plenty of space and left the PC running while I went on vacation for a month. I came back to discover that not only had my hardrive been filled with self-replicating copies of those techno tracks, they also mixed with my other tunes and so now I have a collection of Beatles electronica.

We do this all the time with science. For example, when was the last time you ate a banana that had seeds in it? Self-terminating is a harsh term. I prefer the term seedless. Than you can charge people more for it, because everyone wants seedless fruits and veggies.

Monsanto does require a "Technology Stewardship Agreement" to "buy" their seeds. I am guessing the agreement is more of a your licensing the seed. So while you could re-sell the seed they sold you to another licensed grower, the resulting output is being controlled by the stewardship agreement.

On the other hand we have Monsanto who spent millions of dollars creating genetically modified seeds that are resistant to their herbicides. There needs to be a way for them to make a profit from that investment.

The issues; If there is no patent protection the seed manufacturer would have to make all their investment back in one year as any subsequent seeds can be saved and re-sold by farmers. Where is the incentive to invest in the technology if there is no way to benefit from it?

The logical fallacy here is that selling the seeds is the only way they profit from this. The true fact is that they created the seeds to sell Roundup, which previously could not be used by farmers without killing the crops. They discovered that because of how fucked-up patent law is, they could also force the farmers to re-buy the seeds from them every year, in addition to buying the Roundup.

This is not an issue of Monsanto not getting their money out of the research - the yearly sale of Roundup in vast quantities to the farmers does that. It's an issue of Monsanto using a broken patent system to double-dip into farmers' pockets after locking them into the seeds.

. It's an issue of Monsanto using a broken patent system to double-dip into farmers' pockets after locking them into the seeds.

How are farmers locked into the seeds? There is no one holding a gun to farmers heads saying they must use Roundup or Roundup Ready seeds. That is a choice because the combination creates high yields. Why shouldn't the creators of the technology get benefit from it.What would you say if another company had created the Roundup Ready seeds? Wouldn't it be reasonable for them to make a profit on their investment?

There are a couple of major flaws in your argument.1. Roundup was marketed starting in the 1970's a

The way the law is written, you can't even *USE* a patented device without a license.

"Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent."35 USC 271 - Infringement of patent [cornell.edu]

So all the seeds in normal circulation now are "Genuity RoundUp Ready 2". Unless there are stocks of viable 2008 seeds around, there may not be so easy to get original patent-expired breeding stock. Whatever the new trait in "genuity" is, Monsanto just has to prove that it is in your glyphosate-resistant crop to come after you. And it most likely will be, because of cross-pollination contamination from fields with the new stuff